"Making a joke about people called Patel is deeply embarrassing given the timing of the Indian state visit.

A spokesperson for Patel Monday night confirmed the exchange - but insisted he took it as a joke.

Royal author Phil Dampier, who co-wrote "Duke of Hazard, The Wit and Wisdom of Prince Philip", Monday night said: "This is a vintage Prince Philip gaffe, but I'm sure he didn't mean any offence.

While touring a factory near Edinburgh in 2000, Prine Phillip said a fuse box "looked as though it had been put in by an Indian".

Buckingham Palace was forced to issue an apology.

In Cardiff ten years ago he stunned British Deaf Association kids - telling them as they stood beside a Caribbean steel band: "If you're near that music it's no wonder you're deaf."

In 1986 he told a World Wildlife Fund meeting: "If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it."

In Kenya in 1984 the Prince accepted a figurine from a native woman before asking her: "You are a woman, aren't you?"

But perhaps his most famous gaffe came in 1986 when he was introduced to a group of exchange students staying in the Chinese city of Xian.

As he chatted to the youngsters, Philip suggested that if they lived in the country for a year they would "go native and come home slitty-eyed". (ANI)